THE HANGOVER REPORT – Richard Foreman makes a welcome return to experimental theater-making with SUPPOSE BEAUTIFUL MADELINE HARVEY

A scene from Object Collection’s production of “Suppose Beautiful Madeline Harvey” by Richard Foreman at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (photo by Maria Baranova).

Over the years, Richard Foreman has become almost synonymous with New York’s avant-garde theater scene both in terms of aesthetic and content. Largely through his Ontological-Hysteric Theater — which he founded in 1968 — the iconic auteur has stimulated adventurous theater-goers with his many metaphysical creations. Now, for the first time in a decade, the cherished theater-maker makes a welcome return to the New York stage as the writer of Suppose Beautiful Madeline Harvey, a new theatrical production its making world premiere at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village courtesy of Object Collection.

The fever dream plot is murky, at best — as the titular Madeline Harvey (on the brink of self-combustion, her sense of reality is fast fading) walks down a busy boulevard, she intensely and intimately locks eyes with a stranger, one Roger Vincent, who is seated at a table at a cafe. The scene subsequently morphs to reveal alien life forms (at least that’s what I interpreted them to be) mulling the same scenario (!). Foreman’s text — comprised of repeating, glacially morphing motifs — is rhapsodic, merging memory, reality, and imagination as it wrestles with age old existential questions. The work goes so far as to poke fun at experimental theater itself, pointing out its limitations, as well as the futility of philosophical pursuits at large.

Interestingly, Foreman isn’t credited as the production’s director. At the helm instead is Kara Feely, whose layered tone poem-like staging  — which uses the full depth of the Ellen Stewart Theatre stage to striking effect — pays homage to Foreman’s legacy by conjuring a detached yet critical theatrical landscape. Throughout, musician Travis Just (a longtime Foreman collaborator) underscores the hallucinatory proceedings with a moody drone-like score, played live. All around, the performances are impeccable — rigorous, impenetrably deadpan, and fully committed to Foreman and Feely’s vision.

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SUPPOSE BEAUTIFUL MADELINE HARVEY
Off-Broadway, Play
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
1 hour 20 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 22

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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